It’s sorrow, it’s misery.
An ugly sensation swells in my chest.
I swallow it down and run my hands over my face.
Can’t let my misery consume me, not yet, not while Oliver is just dishing out information in this bid to repair a bond with me, or hold me closer so he can keep a better eye on me.
Whatever his motivations are, he keeps those close to the chest.
So I reach for every other piece of information I might be able to use for a plan I don’t have yet.
I drop my hands to my lap. “What about Asta?”
Oliver turns a questioning glance on me.
“She and Eric Harling are…” I shrug, “close.”
He scoffs. “One way to put it.”
I fight the urge to scoot to the edge of my seat. “How else would you say it?”
He turns a dark look on me.
Oliver isn’t stupid. He knows Eric and I met up in the city, and that I hid it from Father.
“Asta reads too much,” he tells me. “In her mind, he is her saviour. But really, he is her Wickham.”
I have heard Eric called a fortune hunter more than once, an aspirer, but to call him a Wickham?
That’s character.
A breath sags me. “All gentry are called fortune hunters when they pursue aristos. What if he actually likes her?”
Eric prefers Asta to me.
I know it.
I don’t fumble over the knowledge, try to justify it all with the reasons of politics in our world.
But there’s something deflating about it, all that work I put into a path I couldn’t pave fast enough.
After a moment, he says, “Eric has feelings for Asta, I’m sure. But I also suppose his apprenticeship is too suspicious to overlook.”
I blink at him. “What’s suspicious about wanting to be a master? That’s an acceptable profession for a gentry.”
“And it happens to be a prime position to meet young, pretty aristos debutantes.” Oliver’s smirk is dark. “He’s a rat that made his home in a manor. He positioned himself at the school for future meetings, future love,” he scoffs, “as backups—because the chances of him actually marrying Asta were always slim to none.” His smirk darkens into something ugly. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a few other aristos flings lined up, just in case it didn’t work out with Asta.”
Oliver stares at me, unflinching.
That message was for me, clear as day.
It was to put me down, stamp out the hopes of a future with Eric I might harbour.
But I don’t harbour those hopes anymore.
Eric fucked me, then I heard nothing from him.
But if he called or wrote, I suppose I wouldn’t know. Communication is too easily intercepted in my home.
